The Dark Star
by FPB
Summary: Professor Dumbledore finally gets to hear the secret of Mrs. Zabini's many marriages. And the truth is unexpected... beautiful... and terrible.


THE DARK STAR

...true enough, Headmaster. They tell a lot of stories about me. I let them talk. In days like these, it is much better to be feared than understood. At least, in the social circles in which I move. So far, nobody has guessed the truth. I wonder if you have? You are a man of secrets, they say.

I first saw the dark star over my brother, Amandus. Yes - most people don't even remember I had a brother. I was six, and I noticed this strange kind of... pulsating light... in various shades of black, grey, black, dirty grey... hovering over his head, like an ugly crown. I started asking my family about it, and you know what? Nobody else could see it. People thought I was ill. As it turned out, I had a bad fever that winter and nearly died, and my mother became sure that my hallucinations were an early warning symptom.

I made the connection myself, when I found my brother dead, stretched out under a thick tree branch, where he had smashed his brains out while horse riding. Oh, yes, it was - as you say, I was seven, and that was a gruesome thing for a girl of seven to find. I stood there for a few minutes before I gave the alarm, and I knew that he was dead. That ugly, dirty doll on the ground, with the horse quietly grazing a dozen yards away - that was not my brother any more. I could not see any of the animation, of the person I had known, in that motionless flesh. And I could not see the star.

A couple of times after that, I saw the star over the heads of random people in the street. When I was nine, I saw it over my great-grandfather. I told nobody, but started keeping his company as much as I could. I listened to all his stories and started a diary just for the purpose of writing down everything he told me. I did not have much time, however; three months after I first saw the star, he suffered from a violent heart attack, and fell down a flight of stairs in the process. By the time I found him, he was nearly dead; but thanks to the attentions of the Medi-Wizards and of his family, he lingered for nine more months. Then he died.

I suppose by now I had learned to be silent about many things. People would remark on what a strange little girl I was, when they thought my mother or I were not within earshot. I did not make many friends, at home or at school. I guess I preferred my own company. It does not make it easy to make friends, when you have a large and growing part of your life that you have to keep hidden. Friendships and secrets do not go well together.

At the time, the Lockhart family used to live in Hogsmeade. Of course you remember them. There was something wrong about all the three brothers. Your boy Potter exposed Gilderoy as a fake not so long ago. Cu Roi Lockhart lives as a recluse in Ireland and will let nobody into his house. And Elroy... I wonder if you ever saw through Elroy Lockhart, headmaster? Or did you only sack him as DADA teacher because of that curse they talk about?

I can tell you that all the girls in Hogwarts hated him. They called him the Perve, Ned the Ped, and similar insults. I was a bit too young to understand at first, but I knew from the beginning that everyone regarded him as something dirty and corrupting - someone to steer clear of. But one thing only I knew. I could see the dark star above him.

I was barely beginning to turn from a girl into a woman, and that was the stage that Elroy was most drawn to. I was only half-conscious of what he wanted, but of course he was a remarkably handsome man, with that boyish smile and fresh complexion, and his thick fair hair shading his very dark blue eyes. So, when he started showing an interest in me, I forgot what I had heard - and, in any case, only half-understood - from the other girls. It had never been much more than a rumour to me, and I had no close friends in Slytherin or elsewhere to worry if they did not see me in the evenings.

It happened one evening in early spring, shortly before the Easter break. I remember because I had to go home for Easter and had a lot of trouble keeping it from my mother, and besides I was keeping a diary. Yes... like I did for my grandfather.

I know, Headmaster. Of course, if you had known what Elroy Lockhart was up to, you would have done all the things you say. Of course, it was wrong and perverted. But it happened, and it is a bit late to change it now.

I had only a half-notion of where were going, but I was scared and terribly excited. The mystery and the slow discovery of a male body, the clothes slowly slipping away from the flesh, the rise and fall, rise and fall, of the chest... these things have a way of taking over the whole world for you, as if you were discovering something new and strange and overwhelming.

But you cannot separate it from the star. I could see it over his head all the time. The poor man thought he was seducing me, having his will - but I wanted it more than he could imagine, and I wanted it because of the mystery and the power and the fascination of the dark star over his head.

You look unhappy, Headmaster. Perhaps you are disgusted at the thought of what one of your teachers did to a girl of twelve. Yes? But there is something else - the star. The draw and fascination and terror - the beauty and mystery of his living body, filling all the world for me, and the star. And when he finally had me, it was something so tremendous, it hurt so much, so painful and exciting and beautiful and unstoppable - ending in living lightning...

...I fainted. That is what he said once he had brought me round. He was scared; no other girl had ever reacted so violently. (So, yes, Headmaster, he had done it before, with other girls.) He was worried - I can see it now - worried to the depths of his cowardly soul, that he might have done me some damage he would have to explain. Me, I just felt like I had just completed something necessary and wonderful. I was calm and happy and a bit annoyed at his fussing and fear. I just got up and went. How did I manage to get back to Slytherin? Uh, well, I think we won't talk of that... You are _still _Headmaster, and I am still a Slytherin.

For the rest of the year, I had a sort of reaction. One cannot experience something so awesome and unexpected without some shrinking, some drawing back, even a little fear. At least, not if you are me. I would not consciously think about it; but every time we went to a DADA class, I would see his blue eyes, and the dark star pulsating and changing above his head.

With June came the announcement that he would not come back; and this brought back to me exactly what the star meant. There was no choice - not that I could justify it rationally, but I had to. With my heart in my mouth, fascinated and horrified, I sought him out. He was a bit annoyed, a bit scared, a bit unwilling - he seemed to have other things on his mind. But I was offering him, after all, the very thing to which he was a slave. He was addicted to underage girls. He did not resist for long.

The second time was as good as the first - better, if anything. I fainted again, but this time he was not as scared as the first time. He brought me round, rather gently, and went into his kitchen to get me a fizzy drink.

Suddenly I heard a smash and a scream. Someone was yelling, a strange strangled sound - certainly not Elroy's voice - then I recognized it was French. "..._eh bien, t'as bien peur maintenant, sale fils de pute? Tu l'as bien voulue, eh? Elle t'a fait plaisir? Tu n'en avais pas peur alors, quand tu t'est fait une petite enfante comme_ _ç__a! Sale pedo, fils d'une truie, je vais te faire payer pour toutes tes viols!_"

It was all too obvious, even to a naïve twelve-year-old. I never learned who the avenger was; but I knew even then that my own father would have done the same. I cowered in Elroy's bed, under the blankets, and even under them I could see the green reflex of the light of... uh... a spell I will not name. Then, when the noise had ceased, I crept out and went to see him.

His kitchen was a mess, with furniture and cutlery thrown all around the place and smashed; and if he had been alive, I know he would have hated it. He loved his home in order. He was, he had been, as neat and fussy as an old spinster. But these things would no longer bother him - in the middle of the chaos, among the broken dishes and scattered food, he lay as composed as if he had gone to sleep in his garden in the sun. But that was nothing like what he really was. As I looked at him, I saw again the empty and meaningless quality I had seen in my brother's and my grandfather's bodies. What lay there was no longer my lover; it was a flesh dummy with nothing of what made the man.

And yet that was his body. He was naked, and I could see and trace all the parts I had touched and kissed, and all that had touched and felt and kissed me. There was no longer any attraction, then - but there was a different sort of fascination, a dark and unanswerable wonder. I think that, from then on, I knew my destiny.

As I said, Headmaster, I know all the stories they say about me. They call me the Black Widow. Let them! The more fear I inspire, the safer Blaise and I are in this time of treachery and war. But the truth is quite different. The truth is what I knew, coolly, instinctively, when I knelt, barely pubescent, by the corpse of my lover - justly and properly dead for all the things he had done to girls like me. I knew then that the dark star would always draw me after it; that I would not love unless I saw it beat like a murderous heart, black and unhallowed, over the head of a man.

His murderer was never caught, and nobody knew that I was with him when he died. And from the time I left his home, I started earning a reputation as an ice princess to rival Narcissa Black's - and rather better deserved, I think. I don't think I ever was a tease. I genuinely had no interest in the various young men who fell for me from time to time, or who courted me for any reason.

It's not even that I do not like men. I know that I enjoy sex, if anything, more than the average woman. Sex... such a cold word for something so... oh, never mind. The thing, Headmaster, is that I am only drawn to men when I see that cursed star shining over one. I can't get worked up otherwise. This is my fate: not to love unless I see the dark star above my lover's head; unless I know that one day soon I will be beside his lifeless body, and see how like life it is, and yet how completely unlike.

I do not take pleasure in the fact, I assure you. I don't know where the blow will come from; whether I will wake up next to a corpse, as it was with Steve Jackson; or get a message from a distant country, as with Al-Mansour Al-Zabini; or see him crushed by an out-of-control Muggle vehicle before my eyes, as with Louis des Frâches. People wonder how I do it. I don't do anything - except love those I know I will soon lose.

I try to be a good wife to them, Headmaster. I give them a good house, support them in all they do, keep them happy in bed, make sure they know they are loved. That is what people find so puzzling. After my third husband or so, when rumours started spreading, the families began to wonder why men would still court me, or let themselves be courted. I remember Steve telling his father and mother: "I _know_ that Arden loves me. I know she will never try to hurt me. You can believe what you like." Two months later, he was dead; and to this day, the Jackson family are as certain that I did it, as that the sun rises in the East. And all I did for him was try to make sure that his last year was the best he ever had. The one thing I regret is that I only ever was able to give one of them a child; and that Al-Mansour was not alive to see his son born. I wish Blaise had brothers and sisters, too.

So why am I telling you this, Headmaster? Or can you guess?

Yes. When we met yesterday, I saw the star above your head. As clearly as I saw it above Steve's... or Louis's... or my brother's. I can see it now - black, and changing, and pulsating, and _accursed_.

No, Headmaster. I know that your tastes do not lie in that direction... most of the time, a woman can tell. And if I wanted to make a joke of it, as you apparently do, I would tell you that you lose a lot. My husband is always a happy man. But I don't think it is very funny, and I would rather treat it as a serious matter. Or did you know already, sir? May I have a better look at that hand?

So. That's it. You knew it already.

Sir, you are about five times as old as I am, and fifty times as learned. But I want to tell you one thing. I have never tested whether the star was a certainty, or only a warning. I never had the opportunity. I do not know, not for certain, that you must die. In all the cases I met, death came violently or by surprise. If you know now that you are in danger of death, perhaps you might take measures and avoid it. I will tell you this: in spite of all I have seen, I am instinctively against any notion of inevitability. I do not believe in doom. And I would like to know that what I see is only a warning and not a condemnation.

Hmmm. I can see that you have made up your own mind already. Well, no doubt you have your own reasons.

I should think that would be obvious. There is a war on.

Yes, I am.

Yes, I am. And I hate what Slytherin has become. I hate everything you-know-who stands for. Life is too precious, too beautiful, and far too short, to waste on that sort of lunatic dreams, let alone sacrifice it to them. I have lost too many men I loved, I held too many corpses in my arms, and all beautiful, all irreplaceable... far too often. I loathe killers from the bottom of my soul, let alone those who batten on the deaths of others. I hate them with a hate so black that I am sure they would be scared, if they knew. If I was the last enemy they had in the world, Headmaster, I would die fighting them! I have warned and warned and warned Blaise against his school friends and what stood behind them... I hope he listens to me, but one thing he has learned from me is to keep his own counsel. If Blaise does not want to say something, not even I can get it out of him. But I think he is far less their friend than they imagine. That is my impression, at least.

Whew! There goes my ice-princess image. But that's all right. I want to see Voldemort destroyed, and I hope you will manage it somehow... even from beyond the grave. At least, that is why I wanted to warn you.

Farewell, sir. Wherever you may fare.


End file.
